Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Petition Asks Eric Swalwell to Act Like a Progressive

Before Swalwell, there was Ellen Tauscher,

who batted away accusations she was not

liberal enough for the district.

CONGRESS | 15TH DISTRICT | The unmasking of Rep. Eric Swalwell as a moderate continues. “Stop lying to us. You've said repeatedly that you're a progressive, but your voting record, your actions, and your corporate and 1% donors tell us otherwise,” says a petition posted on MoveOn.org that has already attracted over 520 signatures in the past week.

The petition first posted by Frank Burton, a long-time Hayward Democratic activist, lays out an argument long simmering in the more progressive areas of Swalwell’s 15th Congressional District that he is simply not who he claims to be.

“When he’s with regular voters, he says he’s a progressive. But we know from their editorial that he told the Editorial Board of the Hayward Daily Review he’s a moderate," writes Burton. "And he told still a different story to the conservative group AmeriPAC, otherwise they never would have made those big campaign contributions to him. And he surely didn’t tell the Concord Coalition he’s a progressive, otherwise they never would have had him sponsor their workshop.”

Going back to Swalwell’s run two years ago against Pete Stark, there was already great suspicion whether his rhetoric to Hayward voters espousing an progressive ideology matched his argument offered in the more moderate to conservative areas of the Tri Valley. That same year at an event in Hayward regarding support for undocumented immigrants, Swalwell was pointedly asked whether he said the same thing “over the hill” in the Tri Valley. He sidestepped the question.

Swalwell’s antecedent, former East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher, also endured cries of not being liberal enough. Swalwell should remember because he was an unpaid intern for Tauscher in 2001. A few years later, The Washington Post labelled Tausher as "Joe Lieberman in a pantsuit" and she received enormous flak for a photo, dubbed the "The Caress." The shot, posted above, appeared to show President George W. Bush with his hand on her knee in a moment that epitomized Tauscher's coziness with Republicans.